MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

8/8 Growing pains

The Cubs used four rookie pitchers on Sunday, the most since five pitched Sept. 30, 2006, against the Rockies. Rookie Thomas Diamond started and gave up five runs on four hits and three walks over three innings. In his Major League debut last Tuesday against the Brewers, Diamond struck out 10 but he fanned only one on Sunday.

Casey Coleman, James Russell and Mitch Atkins followed Diamond. Back in that September game, it was Juan Mateo, Jae-Kuk Ryu, David Aardsma, Angel Guzman, and Les Walrond. Reds manager Dusty Baker was the Cubs manager at that time.

The kids are going through some growing pains.

“When you don’t make plays behind them and you have a tough lineup, it’s going to be hard already,” Koyie Hill said. “I think [the rookie pitchers] are capable. I don’t think they’ve showed their best stuff today.

“You’ve got to break into the game sometime, so you can’t say it’s a bad situation or whatever,” Hill said. “You’re going to have to go through that. They’re good kids and work hard. I don’t doubt they’ll come back better for it next time.”

“You’ve got to break into the game sometime????” I wonder if that holds true for minor league CATCHERS as well when the big league club could use a back up capable of hitting OVER .200. And I wonder if Hendry will take Hill’s pearls of wisdom to heart and allow (in all his regal, king-like glory) Sandberg to “break in sometime” as manager. Of course now that the Ricketts have annointed Hendry the savior for 2011 all bets are off on who he’ll bestow his benevolance on….the only thing beind saved at this point is Hendry’s job. TRUE GM leadership with the improvement of the entire ORGANIZATION IN MIND would not have done what’s best for Pinella’s leagacy but would have done what’s best for the major league team, given Lou his gold watch and PROMOTED from within getting Sandberg’s feet wet as a major league manager. But as long as the blind keeps leading the blind this organization will keep tripping over the same old same old same old same old…

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